Summary
smashing old-school adventure!
The Good
There are a variety of character classes and a multitude of different spells & abilities! There were a good range of monsters to fight in a large selection of dungeons. You have the option of haggling merchants in towns to get a lower price on weapons & equipment but over haggling will offend the merchant thus removing that item for sale (only haggle a couple of times on each item) Some different character races includes Trolls (which helpfully regenerate lost hit-points), Elves, Dwarfs & Humans of course. Some different character classes include Sorcerers (which can summon beasts to fight for you), Priests (which are good at healing wounded party members),Paladins, Barbarians, Rouges and many other types of adventurer as well (I cant remember all the class types because I played DEMON'S WINTER on a Commodore 64 over 10 years ago!)
The Bad
This was a challenging game (at least for a teenager playing on a Commodore 64) but it still kept me interested. It could probably have done with some better sound effects because even the old school Commodore 64 had a reasonable sound chip for its day. The graphics were mediocre (only 16 colors available in total on the Commodore 64) and you sometimes had to use your imagination a bit to picture what your characters & monsters looked like!
The Bottom Line
A strategic Role-playing game consisting of a party of adventurers undertaking various sub-quests to recover the broken fragments of a mythical & magical crystal staff which are strewn all over the landscape. Relatively similar game style to other SSI games of the day (like AD&D Curse of the Azure Bonds & Pool of Radiance etc) Don't expect too much in terms of sound effects or graphics (remember it was made in 1988) But overall a quaint, nice little adventure requiring minimalistic instruction to play. Enjoy this classic for what it was & try not to compare it with multi gigabyte requiring games of today!
